Slow and steady wins the whole damn thing — meet the Bleases.

July 12, 2016

● 3 min read

Quick Takes: Lord Stanley

Slow and steady wins the whole damn thing — meet the Bleases.

July 12, 2016

● 3 min read

[QUICK TAKES: Collected observations that probably mean nothing, but might very well mean something. Here, travel back in time for a few moments stolen in the company of the co-chefs of Lord Stanley at the start of its existence.]

The latch is the
culprit, which you know because both chefs — that’d be husband-wife team Rupert
and Carrie Blease, in matching, immaculate white T-shirts — point it out when
you step in off the sidewalk. It clicks back into place with an extra
yank.

Lord Stanley is in San
Francisco, at the intersection of one busy street, Broadway, and another busy
street, Polk. There is also a Lord Stanley in London, which is not a sleek restaurant
decked out in white and slate and concrete, but rather a pub off the Piccadilly
Line which the couple frequented while working at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. Rupert’s father
was also named Stanley, though he was not a lord in the official sense of the
word. So: many threads.

The kitchen windows face
Broadway, with halfway-fogged glass that obscures the lower half of the faces
strolling by. Sometimes these floating half-faces stop abruptly to stare
straight into the kitchen, which is unnerving the first time and entertaining
the next, and probably a bit tiresome mid-shift. Rupert gives a jolly, crazed
wave when someone locks eyes with him on accident. Sometimes they wave back,
startled. “No idea who the fuck that was!” he sing-songs, and turns back to his
cutting board.

Rupert is English, Carrie is Californian, but no matter where they
were in the world, this has always been the plan. They always pictured their
restaurant — which came into the world just as the couple celebrated ten
years together — here, in this foggy city of hills, where their joint endeavor is marked instead by color. Colors at Lord Stanley are either translucent or
saturated; everything is the greenest green, or yellow, or red. Sorrel is not just pedestrian green, it's electric chartreuse; the lightly smoked salmon it sits on is neon coral instead of pink. Maybe it's the light or the plates or maybe you had more coffee today and are coincidentally experiencing super-vision, but it doesn't look the same as all the other understated restaurants hawking New Californian cuisine. There's an undercurrent of restraint, but it very clearly doesn't represent caution: it's confidence.

The natural progression for
anybody who stays in this trade long enough, Rupert says, is a very certain feeling
that being in charge of someone else’s food isn’t going to be enough. You will
never truly own Per Se’s food, or Blue Hill’s. At a certain point, only yours
will suffice. He says this as he
stands over a neat tray of mise en place,
segmented into little silver compartments. Pickled chanterelle is alongside
summer truffle, nestled next to olive crumb, then pine nut relish, then garlic
confit.

It’s 4PM — minutes suddenly crunch into
each other at increasingly high speeds, the day reveals itself to be something
closer to a slingshot than a straight line — and if the quiet morning hours were marked by the methodical turns of bread dough, now there is a cook in every
corner. One of them snips fennel fronds and the smell floats around the
kitchen. Staff meal is rice and a collision of vegetables eaten in hurried bites, standing.

The locks slide open, and they’re
all antsy, eyeing the door. Rupert scrubs a hand over his face. Carrie busies
herself rolling truffles; the ticket machine coughs and an order rolls in. All eyes land on the ticket.

Carrie’s voice rings
out: onion petals, mussels. In a year or so, after
Lord Stanley has won itself both a Michelin star and respectable nods from critics both local and national, those teensy cipolline onion petals filled with a sherry soubise will
have proved an unbeatable fan favorite. For now, they are an elegant
experiment.Lovely, Rupert calls back. The kitchen purrs into action, just as they planned.